If, as the phrase goes, it’s a crowded life that’s most easily remembered, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani couldn’t have chosen a better time to put down his memoirs in black and white.

In the run-up to the general elections, weeks after the NDA declared him its Prime Ministerial candidate, Advani’s autobiography My Country My Life will be released this month by former President A P J Abdul Kalam.

According to a statement issued by his publishers Rupa, “in a country where political memoirs, especially by those who are still active in politics, are rare, this book is bound to be regarded as a landmark.”

Sources close to the publisher said the book captures the politics of India spanning eight decades tracing Advani’s growth. But it’s not a historian’s account, it’s that of a participant.

From his childhood in Karachi to his joining the RSS in 1942, the trauma of Partition, his meeting with Atal Bihari Vajpayee — Vajpayee has written the foreword to the book — and the days of the Jana Sangh, the Emergency, Ayodhya, Rath Yatra, his stint in the Government as Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, the Agra Summit, Kargil and terrorism and the recent controversies including his falling out with the RSS in 2005 over his Jinnah remark.

Sources said the autobiography has been in the making for the past 18 months but its launch is being seen by those close to him as a signal of his “intellectual, physical and political robustness” to both his party and the nation.

... contd.